


Some Vile and Tenacious Thing

by anomieow



Series: Some Vile and Tenacious Thing [1]
Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: D/s undertones, Dirty Talk, M/M, Mildly Dubious Consent, Oral Sex, Rough Oral Sex, Sex Pollen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-29
Updated: 2021-01-29
Packaged: 2021-03-15 01:28:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29055897
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anomieow/pseuds/anomieow
Summary: “Are you quite all right, Jopson?”Thomas Jopson is not, in fact, quite all right. He feels himself sway, extends his hand to steady himself against nothing, and tries to recall the question he’s just been asked.“I asked if you are quite all right,” Crozier repeats. His face swims into focus, the coarse-hewn and ruddy handsomeness of it.“Quite, sir,” Jopson lies. He is—not unwell, exactly. Quite the opposite, in fact. He feels elated, expectant, like a child on his birthday. A fever, must be.
Relationships: Francis Crozier/Thomas Jopson
Series: Some Vile and Tenacious Thing [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2146371
Comments: 13
Kudos: 49





	Some Vile and Tenacious Thing

“Are you quite all right, Jopson?”

Thomas Jopson is not, in fact, quite all right. He feels himself sway, extends his hand to steady himself against nothing, and tries to recall the question he’s just been asked.

“I asked if you are quite all right,” Crozier repeats. His face swims into focus, the coarse-hewn and ruddy handsomeness of it. 

“Quite, sir,” Jopson lies. He is—not unwell, exactly. Quite the opposite, in fact. He feels elated, expectant, like a child on his birthday. A fever, must be. All afternoon he’s felt it coming on, ever since his chance conversation with Lieutenant Little that morning, but he’s not the kind to lay aside his work on account of a little cold. Accompanying the fever, a fanciful turn to his thoughts—stray memories resurfacing. First he thought of the scrivener he’d loved humming snatches of popular airs over his work; then of a sleek dappled dun mare a neighbor had kept in their tiny yard. Pale blue eyes, this horse had, that in the light before dusk seemed to blaze. His mother, before. (Too glad in his heart he is in his fever think of her after.) He recalled carnivals, whippings, feral cats—a nightmare once of a sumptuous feast crawling with worms—once, a trip to the lakeshore, scrimped for, the sun battering his shut lashes as he floated on his back—

But as the afternoon rolled on, his thoughts took a lurid turn. He recalled fumbled interludes in alleys, the press of heated flesh. Hard or half there, he kept to his berth as much as he was able. A hurried interlude with his right hand made it possible for him to at least focus for some few hours on inventorying the pantry, until he was interrupted by Little, who’d come to retrieve some marmalade from his personal store. Jopson found himself studying the Lieutenant’s mouth, and decided it was wasted on that grim, hangdog expression he was always putting on. He wondered how those lips might look parted round a gasp of pleasure—and had had to make time for a second session of self-abuse prior to his evening duties with Crozier. 

Now, it is only natural to find oneself lonely on so protracted a journey, and sensible that such longing would range toward one’s most familiar companion—that is, Captain Crozier. It is natural, yes: and it is inconsequential. To pursue him in any measure, Jopson knows—most of all in the basest of ways—would spell disaster. And so he simmers deep beneath his composed exterior.  
But tonight it is difficult. His head feels buoyant and outsized, and he is continuously wiping sweat from his brow with shaking hands. And he walks slightly stooped to hide that which the barest scrutiny would reveal. Crozier does not seem convinced by his assurance anyway, so regarding him from beneath thick lashes, Jopson adds, “A bit of a fever, perhaps.”

“Then put down that rag at once and get yourself to bed. You must rest!”

“None of that for the wicked, sir,” he says softly.

“You’re about as wicked as a kitten, Jopson.”

“You’d be surprised,” he says before he can stop himself.

Crozier quirks his brow and seems poised to banter back, but instead he clears his throat and inquires after business aboard the Erebus. 

“I’m sure I don’t know,” Jopson responds tartly, disappointed at the change in the conversation’s tone.

“No? I had heard from Lieutenant Little about some strange… goings-on concerning a fungus Goodsir had found. A fungus, all the way up here?”

“Oh, that. Lieutenant Little may be better able to apprise you of that news; he’s the one who laid his own eyes upon it. He did say it was… pungent and rather repulsive.”

“Did he touch it?”

“I’m sure I don’t know, sir.”

“One ought to be careful with fungi. Some are topically toxic. But Goodsir would know, I suppose.”

Jopson sits without asking in the chair catecorner to Crozier’s and then, realizing the appalling informality of his act, makes to rise again. But Croziet stops him with a hand on his wrist and a tilting forward of his head. “Please,” he says. “I’ll not be known as the man who ran a sick man to the bone.”

Jopson inclines his head in thanks but says nothing more. God, but this is a ripping fever—he’s never known the like. He _should_ get himself to bed but he’s distracted by the brief touch of Crozier’s fingertips on the back of his wrist, and an absurd but confident instinct that certain strenuous activities would do a world more good than a good night’s slumber. In fact, to leave Crozier’s presence just now, he knows in his blood, would be a grave mistake. He studies his face, all searching, gentle concern.

“Sir, I—this will seem extraordinary, but I fear I am ill in a rather odd way.”

“Oh?”

“I—am having rather vivid imaginings, sir. All afternoon I’ve recalled things from my past, my childhood, as though they had only just occurred. But what’s more, I…” His mouth is dry and he tastes blood. “I feel driven to—no, I’ll not say it.”

“There is little that would surprise me, Jopson.”

Jopson considers this. His tongue feels gelatinous in his mouth, insensate, the words vibrating in his throat are at once not quite and entirely his. When he speaks, his voice shakes. “I have told myself, sir, that it is not appropriate, but just now I find it the most natural thing to confess it—it feels as though—” he wipes sweat from his brow with his handkerchief, sucks in a deep breath. “Touch me, sir. Please. I need—touch.”

Crozier makes no move to do so, and if he is surprised, he does not show it. After a tense pause, he says in that abrasive tone of feigned jollity, the one that usually emerges only when he’s drunk, “Yes. You must go to bed at once.”

“If you’ll come with me.”

“Do you forget to whom you speak? Have we been on too intimate terms, that you believe I will allow this?” 

“Not intimate enough, sir.” He knows his voice is pleading but he can’t do a damned thing about it; what’s more, he feels the beginning of anger in his chest: a black tightening. 

“Jopson, I believe—you are drunk. Yes, that must be it. A loose drunk, too, from the looks of it, ready to stumble into anyone’s arms.”

“Easy, you suppose?” Jopson slurs. 

“Mm. _I_ certainly question your judgment, anyhow.”

“I… question yours, sir, if I may be frank—God, it feels like I’m burning—do you have any idea what I can do with this mouth? Don’t act as though you’ve never wondered about it. I’ve a sixth sense—out of self-defense, you understand, a pretty thing like myself—for when I’m being leered at. Like I’ve eyes in the back of my head. And if you think… if you think I don’t feel the weight of your gaze on my arse—“ he feels the starch slide off his speech; he feels a funny kind of mingling rising in him of good humor and hysterical rage and mostly just the rawest want he’s ever known, a thorny thrusting cresting of it in each vein and capillary—he’s so hard his cock feels brittle, like even the press of the seam of his trousers will break it in half. “You’re not understanding,” he says limply. “I need you to just understand.” He reaches for Crozier’s hand and Crozier does not pull it away.

He’s heard rumors, of course, of toxically potent aphrodisiacs but has always dismissed them as old sailors’ tales: perhaps once someone mistook the hallucinogenic drowse of some exotic herb for something more potent, and the tale was passed about until all the truthfulness of it was worn clean off. But now he looks at Jopson and wonders again about the fungus Goodsir found, _pungent and rather repulsive_. Tenacious, no doubt, and successful in some terrible and vile way, to survive in such a clime. He cannot, of course, dismiss the supposition that the man is merely drunk: but he’s watched his state deteriorate over even these past few minutes without a sip. Now Jopson swings down onto his knees before him and braces himself with one hand on either knee. His eyes, all dopey and heavy-lidded, seem to ask permission. 

“Get up!” Crozier barks, his steely tone belied by the gentleness with which he helps Jopson to his feet. 

“Sir,” Jopson says, “please let me lie down. I’ll keep my hands to myself, repulsive creature that I evidently am—” His tone is acidically sulky and he regards Crozier from the sides of his eyes, his lower lip tucked out in a sly pout. Petulance suits him. How simple it would be—a measure of mutual relief, no? Crozier sets his jaw against this temptation. He’ll not take advantage of his steward in such a state, no matter how quickly he’d acquiesce to such overtures from Jopson sane, and he tells him so. As he helps him to his bed and gentles him down, he tells him of the rumors he’s heard of powerful aphrodisiacs and of his fears that Jopson is affected by one now. 

Jopson listens, it seems, earnestly, and when Crozier is done he says—all trace of his cultivated posh accent gone—“Sounds like you’d be doing us both a kindness, sir.” 

“I’ll not take advantage of you in such a state,” Crozier says stiffly. “You may, however, make use of my bed, however necessary—only because I’d not send you back out amongst the men in this state.”

Crozier draws the curtain shut on him as he scrabbles at his flies, his customary deftness vanished, but this does not encourage silence as he’d hoped it would.

“I’d rather take my chances amongst the men,” he sighs, “if you’ll not lift a finger.” He hears him spit—into his palm, he assumes—and sigh as he begins his ministrations. “Anyone else affected by this, you fancy, cap’n sir? Little, I bet. Wonder what state—ah—he’s in. Abusing himself right now, I bet, and who knows _what_ he’s thinking of—”

“Please do what you’re doing quietly,” Crozier says mournfully, disappointed that Jopson’s no longer thinking of him. He listens to slick, repeated sound of his fist gliding down his shaft, the jagged escalation and ebb of his breathing, frustrated whimpers. He adjusts his own burgeoning prick idly but otherwise disregards it, for that, too, would be a trespass upon Jopson. Crozier’s never had a particularly intimate relationship with God, and perhaps in his heart of hearts is even an atheist, but at this moment he at once thanks and damns whatever inscrutable and absurd forces have conspired to put him here, _just_ here, separated by a threadbare curtain from his beautiful and willing steward desperately frigging himself. 

Jopson goes still, sighs angrily, and says, “No good.” When Crozier doesn’t respond, he continues, “You know what would help me along, though? If I had sir’s great fat prick on my tongue.” 

“Christ, Jopson. Such vulgarity doesn’t suit you.” (This is a lie. It tumbles from his lips like Shakespeare’s lushest sonnets. His cock twitches, salivates.)

“You’ve no idea what suits me,” Jopson says, pulling back the curtain and sitting up. Crozier averts his eyes but catches a glimpse, a blurred split-second impression, of his long, neat yard jutting ceiling-ward; his coat and shirt are torn off and his trousers shoved down to his ankles. “I know what suits you, though. One don’t tend to another’s habits without learning his ways, you know. I know you’ve got a wee little mean streak, am I right? Trace of brute blood in you. Not cruel, mind—” in the corner of his eye Crozier makes out the motion of him pulling at himself once again, and a slender little tremor crawls into his voice, “—but you’d not be above shoving your cock down an insolent lad’s throat just for the pleasure of shutting him up, would you? Or have I got you wrong? I’d shove mine down yours sure enough but you didn’t strike me as _that_ kind of filthy old lech. More a little tyrant than a subject, you know what I mean?” 

Crozier faces him. Something in him shifts and crashes, like a beam in an inferno burnt through. He feels the muscles in his jaw twitch and a voice surely too raspy and leering to be his own says, “Fine. On your knees, lad.”

Once there, though, Jopson takes his time, starting by nosing about his lap like a dog, taking in the smell of him and mouthing at his hardness through the coarse cloth of his trousers.

“Tease,” Crozier mutters.

Jopson tilts one eyebrow up at him as he undoes his flies and frees his cock. “Look at this lovely fat thing,” he says. “Why, if I’d a yard like this, I’d—”

“You promised you’d shut up, brat,” Crozier sneers, but strokes Jopson’s cheek with his thumb. Then, in a softer voice, he says, “you needn’t do this.”

“I want to,” Jopson answers. “I’ve always wanted to. Never said nothing, though. Now we’ve got to, sounds like, and I can see that prick of yours has got no qualms—dribbling a mess—dirty old fuck—”

Crozier cups the back of Jopson’s head in his palm and shoves him as far down as he can onto his straining cockstand. At first, he lets him perform his battery of dizzying little tricks, the kind only doxies know—and he tells him so, calls him _slut_ , hopes deep in his blood that this is what he wants. But it isn’t enough. He needs something to appease his riled hindbrain. He seizes his shining black hair in his fists and begins to blindly thrust. Jopson gags and sputters and blinks tears from his eyes, but if the escalating symphony of moans and whimpers around Crozier’s length are any indication, he _likes_ it. He even trembles in Crozier’s grasp as though his skin were stripped, as though he were the one being pleasured. Suddenly Jopson’s eyes fly open and he looks at Crozier like he’s gazing upon the face of God, cries out against the head of his prick, and spends untouched—arc after arc, so much his knees scrabble little paths in the small pool it makes beneath him. 

But he’s still hard and Crozier realizes, with a thrum of terror, that he’s no closer to his own crisis, and the blood in his temple has begun to pound with something like fever.


End file.
